Political commentary from the LA Times

Reince Priebus, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, is unsatisfied with who President Obama is palling around with and what the world leader is focused on.

"We’re borrowing four and a half billion dollars a day and this president is more worried about birth certificates, Oprah Winfrey and fundraisers at the Waldorf Astoria," Priebus complained on "CNN Newsroom" Thursday, a day after the president released his long-form Hawaii birth certificate and then jetted to Chicago for a long-scheduled interview with the daytime queen of talk.

“It’s maddening and I just wish the president would engage in the real issues that are affecting America,” Priebus, who recently replaced Michael Steel, said. "We've got him going to Jonas Brothers, golfing, doing everything except figuring out a way to save Medicare that's going to go bankrupt in nine years," he added.

The president, who was one of the people who never seemed very worried about birth certificates, said Wednesday that he too would rather work on the pressing issues of the day instead of being distracted by the likes of billionaire Donald Trump and other 'birthers' who seemed obsessed with Obama's birth.

"We've got enormous challenges ahead of us," the president said Wednesday in Washington, D.C., when he released his long-form birth certificate. "We have to make a series of very difficult decisions about how we invest in our future but also get ahold of the deficit and debt," he said. "But we're not going to be able to do it if we are distracted. We're not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other. We're not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers."

The president said that the media was partially to blame for the hype surrounding his birth certificate.

"I would not have the networks breaking in if I was talking about [national security]," he said, referring to the television networks interrupting their scheduled programming to give all their viewers the chance to hear the president explain how he was able to make public the more detailed Hawaiian document.

Now that Trump, who leads other would-be GOP presidential candidates in preliminary polls, has lost his trump card and has moved on to demanding that Obama release his school records, would Priebus encourage his own party to engage in real issues that are affecting America?

"It's not my job to play police officer with the candidates," Priebus told CNN's Carol Costello. "It's up to the voters to play police officer and go into the voting booth."